TDK

Cosa Brava is an experimental rock and free improvisation group formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California, by guitarist and composer Fred Frith (Henry Cow, Skeleton Crew, Naked City). All About Jazz described their sound as existing somewhere between folk, Celtic, modern chamber, Latin, funk, Eastern, and prog-rock. The quintet released Ragged Atlas (2010) and The Letter (2012) on Switzerland's Intakt Records, followed by Z Sides (2024). Its lineup draws together members of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum with longtime Frith collaborator Zeena Parkins.

Tin Hat Trio (later just Tin Hat) is an acoustic chamber ensemble formed in San Francisco in 1997 by violinist Carla Kihlstedt, accordionist/pianist Rob Burger, and guitarist Mark Orton, weaving jazz, Eastern European folk, bluegrass, and neoclassical music into what they call freewheeling chamber music. It earns a place in this atlas as the antipode of Kihlstedt's heavier work: it is where she goes when she leaves metal entirely, trading Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's avant-doom for delicate, composed acoustic filigree. Guests across their albums include Tom Waits, Willie Nelson, and Mike Patton.

Dumb Waiter is a Richmond, VA quartet formed in 2012 that fuses noise rock, free/fusion jazz saxophone, mathy post-punk structure, and metallic heaviness into a genre-resistant, frequently absurdist package. Fifth album Gauche Gists (2022, Ossein Records) drew comparisons to Pharoah Sanders and This Heat, with klezmer-tinged sax lines colliding against distorted bass and drums. They sit at the noise-rock/jazz-metal fringe rather than squarely inside metal, but their heaviness and structural weirdness keep them on the avant-garde-metal chart's radar.

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Long-running Novato, California outfit built around Jean Baudin's tapped/slapped 11-string bass, splicing metal, funk, ska, hardcore, and jazz with East Indian and Egyptian melodic detours and deliberately absurd lyrics. Active since 1989 with a loyal underground following (Papa Roach, Alien Ant Farm, and Deftones all opened for them early on), they've resisted easy genre classification across albums like Intestinal Fortitude, Mutopia, and Vicuna. Classified as RIO/Avant-Prog by ProgArchives and tagged Avant-Garde/Funk/Alternative Metal elsewhere, they sit at the noisier, punkier end of the genre-scrambling spectrum despite being blacklisted from Metal Archives proper.

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SNAILFORCE! is the genre-hopping instrumental project of Greg Eldridge and Adam Stacey, based in Portland, Oregon, blending metal, Balkan, prog and other styles into what the band calls a "musical slime project." Adam Stacey is also known for recording with Estradasphere, Atomic Ape, Secret Chiefs 3, High Castle Teleorkestra and Igorrr. The band's debut, the two-track EP "Greg and Adam's Wilderness Adventure," was released on May 24, 2024, mixed and mastered by Justin Phelps at The Hallowed Halls, with a rotating cast of guest players on strings, horns, shamisen and more.

Titan to Tachyons is a New York instrumental quartet led by guitarist Sally Gates, built around a two-bassist frontline (Trevor Dunn and Matt Hollenberg) with drummer Kenny Grohowski, fusing free-jazz improv, prog counterpoint, and metal violence into sci-fi-themed instrumentals. Their 2022 album Vonals was released on John Zorn's Tzadik label (following 2020's Cactides on Nefarious Industries), and the polyrhythmic, two-bass arrangement gives the compositions an unusually dense, contrapuntal low end. Every member's other credits (Mr. Bungle, Fantômas, Tomahawk, Secret Chiefs 3, Cleric, Imperial Triumphant) wire this band into the Zorn/downtown-jazz and Patton-adjacent avant-metal orbit.

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Unnatural Ways is guitarist/vocalist Ava Mendoza's power trio with bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Sam Ospovat, formed in 2012 and drawing on noise rock, free jazz and metal for a raw, heavy, unpredictable sound built around Mendoza's angular, distorted guitar work. The band's second album, We Aliens, came out on John Zorn's Tzadik label in 2016, and Mendoza herself has a deep pedigree in Zorn's orbit, having played his 1984 'game piece' Cobra and recorded in his Arcana series. She's also a recurring guest on saxophonist Jon Irabagon's improv-noise 'I Don't Hear Nothin' But the Blues' series alongside guitarist Mick Barr.

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Tear Light From Matter is a Massachusetts-based instrumental act pairing saxophone with a standard metal rhythm section, self-tagged on Bandcamp as experimental/jazz metal/fusion/prog metal. Their debut, "In Statu Nascendi" (released 25 January 2019, recorded and mixed by Jerry MacDonald at Odd Fellows Recording), sits alongside a further release, "Fœtal Præyers", in a small but pointed discography. The saxophone-led interplay places them in the lineage of jazz-inflected heavy bands rather than straightforward metal songwriting.

A short-lived 1990s Norwegian project that released two albums on Ironic Recordings — Sjelefred (1996) and Fun For All the Family (1997, produced by Helge Sten) — rooted more in punk and alternative metal than orthodox black or death metal, but stirring in jazz, 70s prog, dance and electronic influences via a rotating cast that included saxophone and trumpet players. Its genre-agnostic, eclectic approach later put it in the same critical orbit as Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Primus.

Yakuza is a Chicago avant-garde metal band formed in 1999, led by saxophonist/vocalist Bruce Lamont. They build a metal base with progressive flair, folding in free jazz saxophone and clarinet, world music, doom, grind, and post-rock ambience into a jazz-metal hybrid sometimes tagged 'jazzcore.' Their discography spans Way of the Dead (2002, Century Media), Samsara (2006) and Transmutations (2007, Prosthetic), Of Seismic Consequence (2010) and Beyul (2012, Profound Lore), and Sutra (2023, Svart Records).